I’ve got my results: an A* in parental angst

The increase in tuition fees should not deter the brightest pupils from having ambition and applying to the best universities

I was never as nervous waiting for my own A-level results as I have been
during the days leading up to my daughter’s. Put that down to the heightened
concern of an averagely anxious parent; but there is more to it than that.
The competition for places at leading universities is dramatically greater
than it was 30 or 40 years ago, not least because in those days it was
unusual even for the well-off to expect their female offspring to attend
university: neither my daughter’s mother nor her grandmothers did so. It was
academic Easy Street for middle-class boys in the days before full female
educational emancipation.

This year the competition seems to have been unprecedentedly ferocious,
generally attributed to the fact that those entering university this autumn
will be charged an annual tuition fee of £3,375: those entering in 2012 will
be stuck with the new rate of up